


And If I Can't Run Away

by griners



Category: Football RPF, gerlonso - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-05
Updated: 2013-07-05
Packaged: 2017-12-17 19:40:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/871261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/griners/pseuds/griners
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He swims back to shore, feeling the water get thinner, lighter, and feeling his chest get tighter, heavier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And If I Can't Run Away

**Author's Note:**

> Doesn't really have a purpose, just something I came up with in a few minutes, idk.

There are beaches in Spain. And the weather’s nice, sunny, a breeze every few minutes for good measure.

He’s on vacation on the South of Spain, and Nagore’s playing with the kids in the sand, and she rubs her belly mindlessly and Xabi feels a sharp pang of something close to guilt spread over his chest. It constricts, and he breathes harder, and he tells himself it’s just because he’s swimming and the air is not enough and he needs to stop for a while.

His lungs are burning, scorching, and the waves are going well over his head now and he breathes in quickly, dives, hears nothing (silence) for three agonizing seconds.

For the first time, there’s something physically enveloping him. For the first time, it’s not love or pressure or a piece of metal slicing through his stomach or an empty ache in his bones. It’s water, something he can thread through his fingers and find innocent and then cover himself in it and feel at home (paralyzed, understood, engulfed in something less painful than life).

He comes up for air, breathes raggedly as he swims further into the ocean, so far that his family is nothing but figures the size of his finger, and he stops.

And breathes.

And rubs his eyes until he doesn’t feel like opening them anymore.

And tries to convince himself he can’t run away from his problems. Not like this.

He swims back to shore, feeling the water get thinner, lighter, and feeling his chest get tighter, heavier.

-

He’s lying on his bed, and his wife is sleeping beside him, looking peaceful and relaxed and her hair is falling over her face and her legs are curled up to her belly and it might be the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

He gets up, puts on a t-shirt and boxers, and steps out to the porch.

He takes his phone with him.

-

_I’m in Spain_

And Xabi types back, with (he’ll never acknowledge it) shaky fingers, _Don’t come here_.

He doesn’t question the fact there’s a buzz on his phone in less than a minute.

_Figured you’d say that_

-

“Nagore!” Alex grins brightly and kisses the brunette’s cheeks, and Nagore’s beaming and rubbing her belly again as Xabi looks at Steven with a haunted look.

-

“You didn’t have the right!” he hisses venomously, and Steven stares at him from the doorway. “I told you not to fucking come here!”

“I know you did,” Steven nods, like he knows this and he followed everything by the book (and what can be so wrong with that?).

Xabi sits on the bed, buries his face in his hands, shakes his head, “You shouldn’t have come.”

Steven sits next to him, and the bed dips with his weight and Xabi trembles with memories coursing in his veins. “I know.”

Outside, there’s the laughter of both their wives.

(A reminder.)

-

“Is it good? Spain?”

“It’s not England.”

“That’s not what I asked, Xabi.”

Xabi closes his eyes, leans into the railing, breathes. “It’s not England.”


End file.
